Bean There (or Bean Square)

Life realizations are coming fast and furious these days. Turns out your mid-twenties is a period not only of astoundingly poor productivity, but also of consecutive, exponentially foolish decisions about the nebulous future. Landscape architecture and goat tending in New Zealand vie for the plan next month. What’ll actually happen, likely, is a continuation of the current status quo – roaming from café job to café job, sadly eating the chocolatey contents of my mother’s Valentine’s Day package for dinner, coming home to 3rd Rock from the Sun on Netflix Instantview.

Which is why I find myself in lovely little cafes like Bean There, a well-windowed spot on the corner of Waller and Steiner. Dedicating the first two hours of a Saturday to life planning seems a productive, adult thing to do, even if it’s just perusing Craiglist with ample break times given to Missed Connections.

Bean There’s attitude, a friendly one underscored by the place’s sunniness and wood paneling, makes it (IMHO) one of the best cafes in the city. It doesn’t hurt that it’s right on the Wiggle, making for terrific people watching – a fact I discovered firsthand when a Dave Eggers lookalike was watching ME. I avoided his gaze. He came over to sit next to me. I switched to where he had been sitting, on the opposite side of the room, ostensibly for an open outlet. He moved again to sit next to me, mentioning a strong inborn dislike for the smell of egg sandwiches.

Normally, such an interchange would turn me off of a place. But Bean There’s just so good. Attractive servers? Yes. Tasty bagels? Yes. Sunlight? Yes. Coffee? Duh. A well-planned future? Not quite, but that’s ok.

Lucy Schiller - Destitute Dispatcher

Lucy's been able to live lots of places but holds her cornfed/pie-fueled Midwestern roots most dear, maintaining too loudly and too often that the Outer Richmond is the Midwest of SF: driven through to get elsewhere and knocked around for no reason (but what other neighborhood has bison?!). You can find Lucy letting things languish in her fridge, purposefully (limoncello!) or not (yogurt...), mouthbreathing, scouring Golden Gate Park for apartment-worthy items, sleepily serving up double nonfat half-caf-half-non-caf lattes at a certain cafe, skulking in various other ones, and yelling under cover of night and costume at SF Bike Party.

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